Does child abuse lead to Asperger's?

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Asperger's is genetic. You are born an aspie. You cannot become one because of bad parenting. :/

I'd second that.

MrXxx. said it perfectly. I get tired of the same old arguments for environmental effects, or parental influence. AS is called a developmental disorder because you were born that way. I have a lifetime of study in biology which suggests that behavior comes from inborn traits.If the neurons connect in improper ways during critical periods of brain development, then behavioral abberations are certain. After the brain forms, all the parenting inthe world, both good or bad will not have a large effect on the outcome. You are who you are, because you were born that way.

My parents were both NT's but that is a little misleading since I was adopted and have never taken the trouble to trace my biological parents.

I know a few people who have suffered abuse in the past and while its not true that it can lead to Asperger's as that is something you are born with, it can lead to a wide variety of psychological reactions

My mum has OCD traits and my dad has Asperger's traits, which makes sense because Asperger's is genetic. I have not been abused by my parents, and even if I had been, it wouldn't have caused autism, because - as has been stated - you're either born with it or you're not.

It isn't caused by child abuse, but autistic children are more likely, to be abused by their parents and caretakers.

All current research would suggest this is not possible. at what age did your parents meet?

It is quite possible your father has made your mums life and ability to cope with schizophrenia far far worse but it seems unlikely he caused it. I would say you have a very valid concern though because a schizophrenic would generally not do well with a narcissist as a spouse.

I'm sorry for what you have been through it is terrible that people can behave like this, surely they should know better even if they are a narcissist. I'm interested as to whether your dad recognises his problems and the pain he inflicts on others?

sorry i hope i am not being too insensitive.


as far as aspergers goes i would say abuse or neglect is unlikely to cause it but can either exacerbate it or maybe even cause other problems that might be similar but not entirely the same. i dunno if they would be changes in neurology or psychology. i personally believe with the realisation that throughout our life our brains are really quite plastic suggests that our psychology can deeply effect our neurology.

thanks for the interesting topic

No. Child abuse can't lead to Asperger's. Though you could say it was the other way round in my case.

I came from an abrasive home. I don't think it contributed to my AS though. My two sisters and brother can vouch for that. But both my parents had extreme personalities. The way the OP described their dad sounds a lot like mine. He talked with a sharp loud voice and would snap over little things even I wasn't aware of. However his personality would switch from one mode to the next, one moment he would be screaming at me for not listeing to him and the next minute he'd take us out to watch a movie. My mom....I don't know what was wrong with her but I know she was very depressed. There are many aspects of her that remind me of myself. She's always been quirky and into her artwork and she was never all that social with her friends. She's also always had an odd way of putting words.

We're all pretty odd. Both my sister and brother have a bipolar disorder and my other sister is like one of those einsteins. She's smart and persistent. I don't know of anyone in my family who has AS except my cousin.

For autism in general (I don't separate Asperger's out, and am diagnosed with autism), there is a higher frequency of atypical facial patterns that occur at a particular stage in fetal development and often go with brain abnormalities that also start at that stage in fetal development. For instance, lowered ears, downturned corners of mouth, etc. I have some of those abnormalities despite having so-called "regressive" autism (which many times, the person was clearly atypical before the "regression").

For another thing, parents often report autistic children being different from birth. As Jim Sinclair has said, many autistic children are born not knowing how to eat. I was one of them. I didn't know how to nurse, which is supposed to be a reflex. Instead, I had to be taught. From the day he was born, my autistic brother (who'd be diagnosed with AS in today's system because of his language development) didn't respond to people the way that most people do, and overreacted to just about all change in his environment and all sensory stimuli. My parents had to keep him in a crib in the dark and basically tiptoe around, or he would scream nonstop. Both of us were hyperlexic, which has a higher frequency in autistic people as well. We could decode written words into sounds earlier than most people, but in my case (which is "classic" hyperlexia) had severe receptive processing delays and was unable to get meaning from either written or spoken words. You can't make a child hyperlexic by abusing them. My brother and I were noticeably different from day one, and this is true of many, many autistic people. They are now showing that autistic infants (looking back at videotapes) can be distinguished from nonautistic ones by their responses to the world in early infancy. It's really obviously present from birth.

There is no way to determine the answer to this question. I don't know how they will ever answer this question given the scope of the spectrum. The commonality has to be found, a source, a switch, a short, something traceable in the electrical connections in the brain. How can anything be measured without first finding the loose wire and how and what that loose wire sparks out. Then factor in the tiny model of the perceptional field of that new life with its loose wire. How can that factor be measured in a brain that is having misfires????

I have heard that there have been some cases where extreme abuse and/or neglect caused children to shut down and withdraw. From the outside this could look like autism, even if the neurology is completely different.

Both of my parents are kind, loving people who have done everything in their power to make sure that my siblings and I have had a good life, so I honestly don't believe that they caused me to become autistic. However, just about everyone in the family exhibits some form of mental illness, especially on my mom's side, so genetics probably play a significant factor.

Abuse can certainly contribute to autistic traits and behaviours. There are many forms of childhood abuse that lead to adult behaviours that have similarities with autistic traits. Such experiences are likely to reinforce those traits in autistic people. There are also social environments that expose autistic traits - many autistic people would not have a disability if there was no necessity of social interaction.

For clarity, I do not believe that childhood experiences of abuse alone can CAUSE autism.

I agree that AS isn't something you "develop" but I can see some AS symptoms developing in someone who was abused.

I had an abusive environment, and I survived it by "shutting down" emotionally. Now, this is more of a chicken vs. egg argument, but I always presumed that my problem with understanding other people was the product of "shutting down" and never developing emotionally, but in light of all the other symptoms and the inability to ever "catch up" in the years since that part of my life, I wonder if the cause of my abuse stemmed from how AS made me stand out from others...making me an easy target.

People should be more open minded about the causes of autism. One cause might be genetic, but perhaps there are more than one? I read an interesting post on WP once about feral children and how they were developmentally delayed like some diagnosed with Autism. How do you explain the similarities between the two? Feral children are often more neglected than abused, so we have to first figure out what type of abuse we are talking about: Physical? Emotional? Psychological? Neglect? A combination of two or more types of abuse?
Based on what we know about feral children, neglect does produce a developmental delay like what we see sometimes in autistic children. So, maybe, in some cases, autism can indeed be caused by neglect, a form of abuse?

As for my mother, she was very abusive. If that were the only contributing factor, I could say it might be the cause of my developmental delay. I also have genetic factors inherited from my father. I can't be certain if I was autistic from birth and that led to my mother being abusive out of frustration, or that her being abusive brought out autistic traits in me.